LB

Helpful, informative, and engaging! I've always been at the top of my classes in English, but this is helping me sharpen my skills even more and apply them to my life.

PB

Apr 01, 2018

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Hard work and worth it! Grateful for the opportunity. Fully recommend it for anyone who is serious about learning to write clearly and improve their prose.

From the lesson

Project 3: Op-Ed

This week, Professor Comer introduces the idea of public scholarship, how academic writing can be transformed for a broader public. Her guest, David Jarmul, will give an overview of how to write an op-ed. You will then have the opportunity to write your own.

Taught By

Dr. Denise Comer

Assistant Professor of the Practice; Director of First-Year Writing

Transcript

>> Oh, I can't believe what this guy is writing, [LAUGH]. Hi Denise. >> Hi, we are here looking at the affairs in today's New York Times and I need your help figuring out what all this is about. >> Yeah, what are they writing, why is this guy writing this? [LAUGH] I have, today's News and Observer from Perrin/g, North Carolina, and thank you for inviting me to speak in your course, and I'm really happy to have a chance to explain to everyone out there about op-ed articles, and what they are, and how you can write one as, write one yourself and that's what we're going to be doing over the next several minutes. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so what are we talking about? We're talking about op-ed articles or opinion, guest opinion articles in newspapers. So, this is today's New York Times, on the day I'm recording this. And I'm going to go to the very back of the newspaper. This will look familiar to some of you. And, so you see there's 2 pages and here is the newspaper's own editorials and here are letters that people have written to the newspaper. We're not talking about those [NOISE]. [SOUND] We're talking about this page over here. This is [SOUND], this is the op ed page. [SOUND] And let's look at today's New York Times op ed page. It has 1, 2, 3, 4 articles and let's see what they're about. We have two that are written by columnists for The New York Times. In this case it, today it's David Brooks and Paul, Paul Krugman. David Brooks is writing about online education. That seems appropriate. And then we have Paul Krugman, who's the Nobel Prize winning economist. and he's writing about fiscal policy, and about, about whether the government should contract or expand, and sort of that set of issues. Then we have two other articles that are not written by the Times' own people. These are, this is what we're going to be talking about. This, this could be you. Okay. The first one is an article by a professor. From the University of Texas and he's writing about the gun debate that's going on now. he calls for changes to the Second Ammendment which deals with arms and guns. And then, another is a piece by a guy who runs a technology company. and he's writing about hacking and computer viruses and computer safety, and his basic point is that people who write software should, should be more diligent about thinking about security. So over the next several minutes what we're going to talk about is how, how you could be one of these. And the punch line is, you don't need to be famous, you don't need to be like president of the United States or some other country, you just need to have a really good opinion and you need to express it clearly. You may not get into the New York Times, but I have worked with hundreds of authors. And we've had lots of people write lots of op-ed articles and have placed them and this is something that you can learn how to do too, applying a lot of the lessons that you've been learning in this course from Denise and others about how to write clearly. So, before I plunge in, let me just tell you a little bit about myself. I am the head of news communications here at Duke University. And in that capacity I interact a lot with reporters from all around the United States, and around the world. We oversee Duke's homepage, it's news pages, it's social media channels. we do videos, research news, all kinds of things. One thing, that we, we especially love doing here, and do, do cause does fairly well, is write Op-Ed articles. in a previous life, I was at the national academy of sciences where I started and ran for almost 10 years an Op-Ed service, where I, I worked with several hundred famous scientists, for the most part. and there too, have got a lot of experience working with lots of newspapers around the United States and also in other countries, learning how to write, better articles and, and, and placing them. And the message that we're going to be talking about over the next few minutes is about how you can do it. So we were just looking at the New York Times, a minute ago you saw me reading our local paper here, here in North Carolina, where we are, one of the two main local papers. So let's just do the quickly the same analysis of this is actually yesterday's News and Observer. So they have one, two, three, four articles here too. They, one of them is a syndicated column from the New York Times, David Brooks. So that's out, that couldn't be you. But they have three that are all by guest authors. the first is from a North Carolina historical group, that's talking about what kind of flags should be shown in the local legislative chamber, and then they have an article here from two professors. Who are talking about the growing gap between rich and poor, and in both cases they, they share their, their opinions about what should be done about that. And then there's a piece, I guess this is written by somebody from out of town, about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the big mortgage companies, and about calling for a policy on that. So it's interesting here in a North Carolina paper, you have two articles that deal, at least on some level with North Carolina issues. and they have at least 1 syndicated, arguably 2 outside pieces. That's actually pretty typical for local newspapers. Let's look at one more example before we plunge in and start talking about how to do it. So here's today's Wall Street Journal. And Wall Street Journal, on their page, they've got, 1, 2, 3. They're all written by outside people, and not surprisingly for a business- oriented newspaper, they're dealing more with business topics. So they, the first is talking about the the federal investigation of possible financial misdoings and what prosecutors are doing on that. The second deals with the monthly jobs report that just came out a few minutes ago for the federal government talking about what should we make of monthly job numbers. And the third is find a man today, graduate tomorrow. This is the controversy that erupted in the last few days at Princeton with one of their graduates saying oh, if you're at Princeton, you should try to marry somebody while you're still at Princeton. and so what's interesting is, look, look how these are all tied to the news. So, in fact, let's look at this one over here about the montly jobs report. April 5th, thats today, the day I'm recording this. April 5th brings us another jobs day, the first Friday in each month. Like talk, talk about newsworthy. and we were just looking at the other things there. It's not a surprise that if you look at OpEd pages, and if you go to your local newspaper or wherever you are you know, at least today when I'm recording this, there's going to be a lot of pieces about the conflict in Syria the Federal budget battle, the new Pope, whatever, whatever it is that's going on. and that's going to be the first and most important lesson which is you really need to follow the news. So let's start talking about about what's going on here. First, let's just, again, the, the name Op-Ed has two meanings. One is opposite the editorial page. And the other is Opinion-Editorial. So, let's just look at, these are again, you can repeat what you've just seen. I'll go through it quickly. Here's a recent New York Times, the online version of their opinion page. And you can see here, they have pieces about the conflict in Iran. and the slaughter of el-, of elephants and other animals in Africa. Things that have been in the news. Here is one from the Los Angeles Times their lead opinion piece here is about the controversy over same sex marriage. they have a number of pieces that deal with Los Angeles. Again, not asurprise. We saw from North Carolina, they're taling about North Carolina, and in a California paper in Los Angeles they're talking about Los Angeles. let's look in other countries as well. So here's Canada, this is from the Globe and Mail in Toronto. They are interestingly weighing in on this say day about same sex marriage and how that Might apply in Canada, and then they have a number of local issues in Canada that they're look, they're looking at. Here's one from Australia, from the Sydney Morning Herald. It's actually their letters page, which they don't have an op-ed page, per se, but they run some longer forms of letters. So it's kind of in the same ball park, and they're looking at the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War. Again, something in the news but they're giving it their local twist. And finally, just to show how this market continues to evolve, this is on Facebook, and this is the times of India, and they're running an opinion section on Facebook. Which is really quite interesting, op-ed pages have very much kept up with, certainly on blogs, now we're seeing them on Facebook. It may look a little different, but all the lessons that we're going to talk about over the next few minutes will, will apply to all of these forms cause it's the same principles of clear writing, expressing yourself, clearly following certain structural ideas, a lot of what you've been learning over the last several weeks. And if you want to just graze different kinds of op ed articles Alltop the slide that you see now, would be a good place to, to go. It links to lots of different kinds of, of op/ed pages. So the people who run these pages, what are, what are they looking for? Well let's, let's hear from them directly, and I'm just going to read to you what you're seeing on your screen. So Here's the former op-ed editor at the Chicago Tribune. He says, an op-ed page ought to be a place where a wide range of voices can speak to the issues of the day; where controversy can blossom or consensus wilt; where a marginal crackbrain can make a reader sputter over the morning coffee; Where four polished paragraphs can bring tears. That's, you could do that. 'Kay? Let's go the Philadelphia Inquirer, another major paper. What we look for: well written, thought-provoking essays on all sorts of topics. We like lively, humane discussions of the issues. It's best if these discussions are vivid and concrete, arising from specific experiences and circumstances, and if they surprise or challenge us. Wait, wait. No, they're not calling for footnotes, they don't want references to my dear friend, Dr. So and So. they're not looking for, for long, lengthy references There, you're writing, you're writing for the general public. Here's one more. This is David Shipley, a former op-ed editor at the New York Times. We look for timeliness, ingenuity, strength of argument, freshness of opinion, clear writing and news worthiness. Personal experiences and first-person narrative can be great, Particularly when they're in service to a larger idea. So is humor, when it's funny. Does it help to be famous? Not really and people often say that well, I can't, I can't do this. I'm nobody. There not going to publish for me. I, I got started personally in this business, I'd just come back from being a Peace Corp volunteer in the Himalyas. And I wrote an op-ed article, and the New York Times published it at some length, on, on their page. And I, and I brought several more for them later, later on again before I had any kind of job like I do now. And, and we see that time and and time again. op-ed editors they, they want, they know who their reader is. You know, imagine who they're writing for, and who you're going to be writing for. It's somebody, it's somebody, it early, you know, typically they're getting a morning paper. They're waking up, their kids are screaming, they're coming down, their kids are still screaming, they're coming down the stairs, they're going to breakfast, they're having a cup of coffee, they're trying to get better, the kids are still screaming. They're taking the newspaper, they're flipping through the newspaper. They really want to see the sports section, see how their team did last night. And then they're flipping, oh, there, there's a new movie out, and they want to see that. And they've got about a minute to go, and they come to the editorial page. They're not going to sit there while you write some long, tortured argument about it. They're going to give you probably 5 or 10 seconds, and you've got to grab them and get them to read your article really quickly. But there's been lots of surveys show that actually opinion pages are among the most read pages of a newspaper. And editors know that if they have a choice between some big CEO or some other muckity muck, who's writing in a really ponderous way or you who's writing in a very engaging way about some argument that the average person can identify with, they're going to run your article every time. And that's some, something you can do. So, we're going to take a, a brief break now and you're going to see three opinion articles. what, here's what I'd like you to do. I want you to just take a minute or two. You don't have to read the whole thing, although you're welcome to do that. But I'd like you to read the first few paragraphs of each of those articles, and I want you to see what, what is common about those, and then when you're done there'll be a quiz. It's not very hard. Go to the quiz and see fill it out, and then we'll come back and we'll talk some more about what we've learned about so far. Okay, did you look at the three articles? I hope you did. And I hope you got the correct answer, which is what they all have in common is that they were all, were time linked, dealing with something in the news. So, the first one, which was written before the death of Hugo Chavez, the head of Venezuela. But it was speculating that that might happen. It was written by a former ambassador to Venezuela. so it was tied to something that was very much in the news there. The second one was about the Super Bowl, and it was looking at the phenomenon of why why people always think that God is on their side for their team in the Super Bowl and how religion fits into our interest in athletics, and the third was dealing the Oscars. And talking about, it was tied to Argo, which of course went on to win the Best Picture Oscar. and so you see the first of those three articles, here which was actually by a former ambassador who is now here on our faculty here at Duke. and who was quoted very widely when president Chavez died a few weeks ago. but he's talking about this issue that was very much in the news. And as we saw earlier if you remember that the papers that we looked at before which were talking about the federal budget battle, same sex marriage, other things that are going on in new news. you're writing for a newspaper, wait a news, news paper, so However you can do it. Try to tie what you're doing to something in the news. I'll share a story. When I was at the National Academy of Sciences I worked with someone who was like the world's greatest expert on earthquakes in the developing world and on coming up with lower, low cost housing so people in the developing countries when there's a The terrible earthquake, as we've seen in too many places, that so many people wouldn't be killed by the, the crumbling walls. And if you let a big blue ribbon committee that studied this and they came up with all kinds of great recommendations on what to do. And so we together we worked, he wrote a very nice op ed article, and what we did is e actually sat on it and as it look we're just going to hold this until there is an earthquake. I know that sounds a bit morbid, but that's the news business and sure enough unfortunately there was an earthquake, I think in this case in Mexico city. We rush the article out and it got published in lots of places. that's a perhaps a [LAUGH] more gruesome example than others you might talk, but think about the piece you just saw about Argo, about the Oscars, or about the Super Bowl. You know that the Super Bowl's coming up, you know that, you know that the Oscars are coming up. Likewise, we've had lots of pieces about agriculture that are tied to Thanksgiving, when people are thinking about agriculture and abundance. and so you can always try to tie what you're doing to something in the news. Okay, time for your second little break and quiz. And I'm giving you three more articles. Again, I'd like you to look at all three of these, they, they're all, also have something in common. Please take a moment, look them through. take the quiz and then come back and we'll talk about those

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